- From: John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>
- Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 17:04:25 -0700 (PDT)
- To: "'Ben Schwarz'" <ben.schwarz@gmail.com>
- Cc: "Wai-Ig" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "Wai-Xtech" <wai-xtech@w3.org>, <public-html@w3.org>, <www-archive@w3.org>
Ben Schwarz wrote: > > I recently gave a presentation here in Melbourne titled > "Take back the web" (http://www.slideshare.net/benschwarz/ > take-back-the-web) > It discusses (there are notes on the presentation) that the > W3C needs the presence of professional designers and further > real world use cases.. > > Taking on this challenge personally, I teamed up with my business > partner to focus on applying some typography to the existing > W3C specifications. > We offered it as a userscript and wrote about it on my blog. > > http://www.germanforblack.com/articles/moving-towards-readable > -w3c-specs > > I'd really like to see a W3C response from my recent commentary > and would like to open up for some discussion in this area.. (Moving to related WAI lists and www-archive@w3.org, as I suspect the chairs would appreciate this...) Hi Ben, While I hardly speak on behalf of the entire W3C, I'd like to say thanks for thinking about this, and for investing time towards solving what you see as a problem: you at least did more than complain about it, so big kudos for that. As an accessibility advocate, I'd like to offer you some commentary and food for thought regarding your re-take on the 'design', as seen through accessibility goggles. At first pass, my largest issue is one of color palette, and specifically many of those shades of teal/blue and white, which do not provide sufficient contrast between foreground and background; notably #99cccc/#ffffff and its inverse #ffffff /#99cccc - this combination fails on all 3 counts: Luminosity Contrast Ratio, Difference in Brightness, and Difference in Color (see: http://www.w3.org/TR/AERT#color-contrast). This is particularly noticeable in the section: "Font matching algorithm", where whole chunks of content is written in #99cccc, making it extremely hard to read. Other color issues include your copyright class and other elements using the #999/#fff combination as this too fails in all three categories. (A useful Firefox plug-in for determining foreground/background colors can be found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/7313/) I would also suggest that the table used for the "Property Index" (near the end of the page) could likely use some vertical rules as well (either via the table rules attribute, or by styling the individual <td>'s with side borders): this lengthy table requires scrolling to view in its entirety and providing the vertical rules would assist both low vision users as well as many users with cognitive perception issues keep track of each column. While less severe than the color contrast issue, I would offer it to you as something to consider. On the plus side, I appreciate the controlled line-length, the enhanced leading, and the fact that you've left well-enough-alone with the default font-size (a huge issue for the majority of the 80% font-sized web). So thanks for that! Finally, I suspect that there is a 'branding' requirement to keep the W3C Document Status indicator on the page (the Vertical Blue bar at the top left corner) - this might not be something that can be dismissed that easily. Overall however, I appreciate the effort and feedback you put in here, and I hope that others within the W3C will take these suggestions to heart. cheers! JF
Received on Tuesday, 18 May 2010 00:05:05 UTC